His Sickness and His Last Wishes

Knowing the custom, and fearing that his body would be treated this way, he hurried off. He said goodbye to the monks in the outer mountain and went into the inner mountain, where he usually lived. After a few months he fell sick. He called those who were there—there were two of them, who had lived in the mountain for fifteen years, practicing the discipline and attending Antony because of his age—and said to them: “As it is written, I am going the way of the fathers, for I see that I am being called by the Lord. As for you, be watchful, and do not throw away your long discipline, but keep your resolve zealously, as though you were only now beginning. You know the treachery of the demons, how fierce they are, yet how little power they have. So do not fear them, but rather always breathe Christ and trust in him. Live as though dying daily. Pay attention to yourselves, and remember the counsel you have heard from me. Have no fellowship with the schismatics, and no dealings at all with the heretical Arians. You know how I avoided them because of their hostility to Christ and the strange teachings of their heresy. So be all the more eager always to follow, first God and then the saints, so that after death they too may receive you into the eternal dwellings as well-known friends. [a]

“Think these things over and keep them in mind. And if you have any care for me, and remember me as a father, let no one take my body into Egypt, or they may lay me in the houses. It was to avoid this that I entered the mountain and came here. You know, too, how I always rebuked those who kept this custom and urged them to stop. So bury my body and hide it underground yourselves, and see that you keep my words, so that no one may know the place but you alone. For at the resurrection of the dead I will receive it back incorruptible from the Savior. “And divide my garments. To Athanasius the bishop give one sheepskin and the garment I am lying on, which he gave me new and which has grown old with me. To Serapion the bishop give the other sheepskin. Keep the hair garment yourselves. And now farewell, my children, for Antony is departing and is with you no longer.”